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Create automatically a table of points from 3D in 2D in CATIA V5

This article will help you to save much time and also to do an accurate work because is almost complete automatically to do.

In a short description, you have a 3D part with a lot of points. You need after that to make the execution drawing where you need to have all coordinates of points. It’s complicated to make this table manually and because that, CATIA has a command in Drawing Module that can make your work much faster. The command it`s named Coordinate Dimension Table and it’s available in Drawing module.

I make a simple part (Fig. 1). It is important to change the default color of points, because in Drawing we will make a fast selection by color (I recommend to read an old tutorial of how to use select tool in CATIA).

Create the Drawing of your part and make sure that you have checked the 3D Colors in your Views. It’s important to have same colors that you have in 3D to make a faster selection. To do that select from the tree your view -> Right Click -> Proprieties -> View Tab -> Select (3D Colors).

Now we have the 2D updated and we can apply Coordinate Dimension Table command. You will find this command inDimensions toolbar.

Click on the command; select all points using selection by color. After selection will appear a new window. In this window you have many options. I will explain you all command one by one:

Axis System – You have the possibility to display the coordinates of points from current 2D view. For example if you have a Front View in XY plane if you select 2D reference axis system the application will display only X and Y coordinates of point. The other possibility is to show the coordinates of points using the 3D absolute axis system that will show the 3D coordinates of points.

Below Axis System you have some options to change the origin of Axis System.

Title – you can write a name for the table (in my case Table of Points view XY)

Columns – This option allow you to change the name of points that will appear automatically near the points. You have 4 options (A, B, C), (a, b, c), (1, 2, 3) and without names.

Titles – Appear below Title.

After all click OK. If the sizes of the table aren’t ok, double click on it -> Right Click on the top of the column and chose Size.